Puppetry occurs in almost all human societies where puppets are used for the purpose of entertainment through performance, as sacred objects in rituals, as symbolic effigies in celebrations such as carnivals, and as a catalyst for social and psychological change in transformative arts.

[citation needed] In the 2010s throughout rural Africa, puppetry still performed the function of transmitting cultural values and ideas that in large African cities is increasingly undertaken by formal education, books, cinema, and television.

[13] Some scholars trace the origin of puppets to India 4000 years ago, where the main character in Sanskrit plays was known as Sutradhara, "the holder of strings".

The probable date of the origin of Burmese marionettes is given as around 1780, during the reign of King Singu Min, and their introduction is credited to the Minister of Royal Entertainment, U Thaw.

Shadow puppets are an ancient part of India's culture and art, particularly regionally as the keelu bomme and Tholu bommalata of Andhra Pradesh, the Togalu gombeyaata in Karnataka, the charma bahuli natya in Maharashtra, the Ravana chhaya in Odisha, the Tholpavakoothu in Kerala and the thol bommalatta in Tamil Nadu.

[23] In many regions, the puppet drama play is performed by itinerant artist families on temporary stages during major temple festivals.

[24] In the 1930s and thereafter, states Stuart Blackburn, these fears of its extinction were found to be false as evidence emerged that shadow puppetry had remained a vigorous rural tradition in central Kerala mountains, most of Karnataka, northern Andhra Pradesh, parts of Tamil Nadu, Odisha and southern Maharashtra.

[24] According to Beth Osnes, the tholu bommalata shadow puppet theatre dates back to the 3rd century BCE, and has attracted patronage ever since.

[27] The puppets used in a tholu bommalata performance, states Phyllis Dircks, are "translucent, lusciously multicolored leather figures four to five feet tall, and feature one or two articulated arms".

Karagoz, the Turkish Shadow Theatre, has widely influenced puppetry in the region and it is thought to have passed from China by way of India.

The advocates of this view claim that shadow theatre found its way into the Ottoman palaces when Yavuz Sultan Selim conquered Egypt in 1517.

He saw shadow theatre performed during a party in his honour and he was said to be so impressed with it that he took the puppeteer back to his palace in Istanbul where his 21-year -old son, later Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent, developed an interest in the plays.

54v of Li romans du boin roi Alixandre ('The Romance of the Good King Alexander'), a Flemish manuscript illuminated by the workshop of Jehan de Grise between 1338 and 1344.

[43] In Sicily, the sides of donkey carts are decorated with intricate, painted scenes from the Frankish romantic poems, such as The Song of Roland.

The rod puppet was mainly of lower-class origin, but the marionette theatre was popular in aristocratic circles, as a celebration of the Age of Enlightenment.

Laurent Mourguet, Guignol's creator, fell on hard times during the French Revolution, and in 1797 started to practice dentistry, which in those days was simply the pulling of teeth.

By 1804 the success was such that he gave up dentistry altogether and became a professional puppeteer, creating his own scenarios drawing on the concerns of his working-class audience and improvising references to the news of the day.

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the familiar Punch and Judy puppet show which existed in Britain was performed in an easily transportable booth.

Two of the Guild's founders, H. W. Whanslaw and Waldo Lanchester, both worked to promote and develop puppetry with publications of books and literature, mainly focusing on the art of the marionette.

[citation needed] From 1957 to 1969, Gerry Anderson produced many television series starring marionettes, starting with Roberta Leigh's The Adventures of Twizzle and ending with The Secret Service.

Many of these series (the most famous of which was Thunderbirds) employed a technique called Supermarionation, which automatically synchronized the pre-recorded character dialogue to the puppets' mouth movements.

[51] In 1911, Jindřich Veselý co-founded the Czech Association of Friends of Puppet Theatre and in 1912 advocated the publication of the oldest specialist puppet-theatre magazine still published today, Loutkář.

The Teotihuacan culture (Central Mexico) of 600 AD made figurines with moveable arms and legs as part of their funerary rites.

Sid and Marty Krofft are two of Americas most well known puppeteers and were mainly known for their live action children's TV series in the 60s and 70s namely HR Pufnstuf and Lidsville.

The story broadly told of Captain James Cook's South Sea Island voyage with botanist Joseph Banks on HMS Endeavour.

David Poulton toured marionette shows via the Queensland Arts Council along his 'Strings and Things' with his wife Sally for many years from the late 1970s.

[66] Comedian and radio broadcaster Jamie Dunn was famous for his Muppet-style character, Agro, who featured on several Seven Network television programs throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

Maeterlinck, Shaw, Lorca and others wrote puppet plays, and artists such as Picasso, Jarry, and Léger began to work in theatre.

Innovatory puppeteers such as Tony Sarg, Waldo Lanchester, John Wright, Bil Baird, Joan Baixas, Sergei Obratsov, Philipe Genty, Peter Schumann, Dattatreya Aralikatte, The Little Players, Jim Henson, Dadi Pudumjee, and Julie Taymor have also continued to develop the forms and content of puppetry, so that the phrase 'puppet theatre' is no longer limited to traditional forms of marionettes, glove, or rod puppets.

[75] Puppetry troupes in the early 21st-century such as HomeGrown Theatre in Boise, Idaho continue the avant garde satirical tradition for millennials.